Lost - WIP

A quick rough:

Golden Harvest

I harvested some onions this last weekend!

Colour Study

Colour study from random Flickr photo.

Tall!

For Illustration Friday
 

Life Drawing

Life Drawing

Life Drawing

Life Drawing

Life Drawing

Life Drawing

Trying to be a bit more construction-y in my drawing.

Life Drawing

From the last life drawing session.

Rainbow Valley WIP

This is almost done.

At this point I opened the photo up in PS and started playing around with making minor changes. The painting is at a point where the more I work, the more likely it is that I'll screw it up, so I don't want to make changes indiscriminately. I added in a car traveling in the other direction and darkened up some of the green areas. Although I like the car, I think it adds additional complications to a painting that already suffers a bit from diffusion of focus. I think I'll leave it out, but I will darken the further hill a bit towards the bottom to add some depth.

Rainbow Valley WIP

Added more stuff. Noticed that the lamp post on the extreme right is supposed to be further back, started the process of changing its position.

What attracted me to the scene in the beginning was the sunset, but as the sky got darker I noticed the bands of colour on the road.  In the watercolour sketch they are very underdeveloped, but when I started looking at the reference photo I decided to bring them out.  I also liked the grass in the foreground, which I didn't really notice when I sitting in it.  (I was too busy swatting at the numerous mosquitoes.  The life of a Canadian plein air painter is itchy.)

Rainbow Valley WIP

The clouds are basically done and I've started filling in the landscape.

Rainbow Valley WIP

Here I've painted in and blended the sky (which turned out better than expected) and laid in the clouds, as well as adding blue and darkening where the trees are going to go.

Rainbow Valley WIP

This is the watercolour sketch from several posts back of a sunset over Rainbow Valley. I'm doing this up as a large (for me) acrylic painting, about 16x20" or 16x24". 

I applied several coats of gesso to some hardboard and started off with a rough sketch in burnt sienna.

Jonas

The finished painting of Jonas.

We got to meet Jonas this weekend. He is a very handsome cat, if a bit shy. Acrylics on hardboard, 10x15".

Undead Alchemist WIP

Don't know if this is going anywhere.

Imp vs Golem

For the Daily Sketch Group, which is not-so-daily.

Food Tent

Another watercolour sketch, this time from the Heritage Festival a few days ago. I believe this was the Congo tent.

I loved those two women, cooking in their hats.

Sunset

A quick watercolour of a sunset I did a couple weeks ago.

The sky turned out well but the light was really going by the time I got to working on the road.  I decided I really liked the patterns of the lamplight but hadn't left any space for the lamps themselves...

I think I'm going to try redoing this one in acrylics.

Jonas - WIP 2

After several more hours of work, I'm almost done. I found some better lighting reference, fixed up the skew in the face and ears and made the eyes a good deal less creepy. I glazed the background with phthalo blue for some richer colour.

At this point I took a photo of the painting so that I could mess around digitally and see what could be improved. I ended up making the shadow more diagonal, darkening the light chair a bit, moving the feet down a bit, adding a bit more highlight to the tail and fixing his left ear. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph the final painting before it got picked up. I'm going to see if I can grab a photo of it when I visit family in southern Alberta later in the month.

Jonas - WIP 1

This is the stage of the painting process that doesn't look very good.  I've laid in the basic shading and started on the eyes.

Jonas Sketch

A preliminary sketch for a painting commission.

Jungle Monster

The beast slithers through the rainforest...

I wanted something that wouldn't be entirely out of place in an episode of Evangelion or Fullmetal Alchemist.

Fireflies

Space kittens with a giant mushroom and fireflies.  Just what you've always wanted!

A Blanket of Gold

I rode out to do some painting while the weather was good. Looking for the edges of the city, I ended up on a hill of dirt in one of the areas they're developing, and there I found this beautiful transition between purple thistles and gray-green weeds and the yellow canola. That's really why you want to be on the prairies -- to go out in July and see the rolling golden blanket beneath a pure blue sky and be wrapped in the heavy scent of clover.

Then I was thoroughly bitten by bugs and had to ride home through a field of mud. Good times!

Door WIP

I've been trying to clean the house up a bit so I've been finding a lot of old sketches, most of which used to be in a pile at work. I found this house entrance design scribbled on a sticky note.

Whyte Watercolour

Since Sunday was rainy I didn't bother bringing the acrylics.  I didn't think I was going to do a lot of painting anyway.  But standing in the rain twirling your umbrella for four hours is boring, so eventually I taped it to the easel and did some painting with the little watercolour kit.

This is the same side of the street as the previous painting, just from a different angle.  I think this picture worked out better than the previous one, barring a few issues with straight lines and perspective.  Occasionally I see a flash of real progress or a nice passage in a painting and that keeps me going.  This one has several areas I really like, while the previous one... not so much.

So I might have to do some more work with watercolours.  They go nicely with pencil crayons and ink as well, so eventually I might be able to combine the three in one interesting whole.  I'll probably do at least some watercolour sketches on vacation in August because the kit is so small and convenient to carry, and I can work very quickly with them.  Actually now I'm rather sad that I didn't spend any time in Barcelona doing watercolours -- if I'd known how convenient the Niji water brush was to use I'd have a whole week's worth of colour sketches from vacation.

Tokyo Noodle Shop

One of the rules (suggestions?) for Art Walk is that you have to spend at least some time working on art while you're there. Since there was a large van or truck parked behind me most of the time, this was the more interesting of the two views I had available.

The old St. Joseph's Auxiliary Hospital building, now condos. Tokyo Noodle is not one of my favourite sushi restaurants in town but it's not bad at all (unlike some others I could name).

And it got more and more attractive as the weekend wore on. Next time I'm going to have to get a spot where I can't smell the tempura cooking. :P

Art Walk 2012

I haven't been posting much because I've been preparing for Art Walk, a weekend of outdoor art on Whyte Avenue here in town.  I've been building frames for my paintings, getting mats, and generally running about like a headless chicken.

I last did Art Walk two years ago, when I was stuck at the far end of the festival.  In 2010 it rained like crazy on Friday so I wasn't able to set up, I was right at the corner so that lots of people cut the corner and didn't even see my display, and I only sold a couple pieces to a friend (who still has them hanging in his house and I really can't complain there -- I like seeing a good piece go to someone who enjoys looking at it and being able to see it again myself).

This year I had a much better location and actually sold some work to strangers.  Friday was hot and very smoky since most of northern Alberta appears to be on fire.  Saturday was less smoky but more windy.  And Sunday was rained out so hardly anyone stopped to look.

I did a bit of networking while I was there and I also handed out some business cards so maybe that will translate to more sales in the future.  I might have an opportunity to do an exhibition so there might be a great deal of painting going on in the next few months.  And I earned back my table fee and then some so I'm happy if a little deflated.

Here's my damp little display on Sunday afternoon.  At least nothing was blowing around under the plastic.

Dwarf Masquerade

Who says dwarves don't know how to have fun?

Carrot Heart

Something surreal for Art Walk.  Pencil crayon on Canson Mi-Teinte paper, about 4.5x6.5"

Heights

They lived in the heights, in a maze of branches and ropes.

Canada Day

We sat on a hill and waited for the fireworks. I just had the little travel set and Niji waterbrush, and I had to scribble really quickly because the light was going. You can see the last bit of sunlight on the right.

Chimera - WIP

Using all those colour studies to improve an old sketch.

Colour Study

Colour study from random photo on Flickr.

Colour Study

Colour study from random Flickr photo.

Colour Study

A small colour study from a photo on Flickr.

Weird Food

Faces

Just some practice portraits from random Flickr photos.  Click for slightly bigger version.

Self-Portrait

In the summertime, when the weather is hot... we hang out in the basement and paint self-portraits.

HMMM.  I look just as flaky in digital paint as I do in photos.

Weird Vehicles

Trying to exercise my creativity after all this painting I've been avoiding.

Industrial Park

Art Walk 2012 is coming up soon and I'm finishing up all the paintings I can manage.  I posted the WIP for this one back in April.  In the end I didn't like the composition so much so I moved some things around and cropped that big blank stretch of wall out of the picture.  (Hooray for table saws!)  The patch of yellow and green paint isn't sitting smack at the edge of the painting now but is a nice and unproblematic focal point.

Telford Lake

Telford Lake in Leduc, Alberta.  I went out to paint plein-air and the location was lovely.  In the end I got rained out a bit and wasn't able to finish on-site.

Acrylic on hardboard.

Barcelona House

More ink.  A house on the slopes of Montjuic, in Barcelona, Spain.  4.5x6.5", from a photo I took on vacation last year.

Camping With the Stars - Rough

I was working on a commission this weekend so it's been mostly rough sketches.

Robot King - Rough

Pie in the Sky

A porkfolio piece, maybe.

Portrait

Went for the long-pose session on Sunday, but apart from the model and the person running the session, I was the only artist there.  Also, we were stuck in the sculpture room since the drawing room was double-booked.

Something's up with the eyes and lips, but I couldn't get things quite right because the model moved.  I might screw around with the details a little more later.